Alternating current (AC) power lines have been used to create local area networks (LANs) in buildings without requiring additional wires. However, the AC power line environment includes high, unpredictable noise levels and highly variable signal attenuation characteristics with multiple frequency dependent impairments. These impairments change not only dwelling to dwelling, but also vary within the same dwelling as devices are plugged into the AC power line or turned on or off. Prior approaches to reducing the effects of these impairments include redundant carriers and spread spectrum techniques. A drawback of these approaches is that they do not fully utilize the available bandwidth. Therefore, a novel approach to transmitting information over AC power lines has been developed.